Brenda Coultas
Workspace 2008-2009
Brenda Coultas is the author of The Marvelous Bones of Time (2008) and A Handmade Museum (2003) from Coffee House Press. A Handmade Museum won the Norma Farber Award from The Poetry Society of America, and a Greenwall Fund publishing grant from the Academy of American Poets. Since coming to New York City in 1994, she has served as program assistant and series curator at the Poetry Project in NYC, and along with Eleni Sikelianos, she edited the Poetry Project Newsletter. Coultas has taught at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado and at the Study Abroad on The Bowery poetry program at Bowery Arts and Science, and the Poetry Project in New York City. Her writing can be found in many publications including: Conjunctions, Brooklyn Rail, Trickhouse, and the Denver Review. Other books include Early Films (Rodent Press) and A Summer Newsreel (Second Story Press). She received a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) fellow in 2005 and is currently a LMCC (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) artist-in-residence.
“The Tatters” from A Critical Mass yellow stemmed feather earlier a blue jay, after a battle finding ourselves holding onto birds. Transmission today while walking briskly, slightly ruffled Before bed, round butter cakes Going to bed, devils’ food. Bright red between sheets. On growing a perfect wing, I forgot about the purpose of flight The cloak of a Peacock A wet pigeon said Why don’t I ask for what I really want? Deep round cake pans We have more loose feathers than wild roaches. I have forgotten the purpose Of touching a child’s hand Pigeon shit on sidewalk Perfect feathers In taking it apart To see how it works I realized that I wish to control the means of production In taking apart a system Or a murder or a flower To see how it works I am not careful I break/ force/ forget the relationship between parts. My father could reason it out. He had a talent for spatial arrangements. My brother could take apart a machine but there it would lie gutted until the parts decayed. Like my brother, I could never assemble that machine again through my own neglect and lack of talent for seeing and understanding the nature of physical objects. None of this is good From the time when objects were made of wood, we cannot return From the printed page, we cannot return When ships were made of wood, there is no return Cast iron, pumped by muscle Pulleys and rope Linens climb in and out the window (this I recognize, cast iron circle, and hemp) Rum soaked cake Half eaten On the table To this we return. Dorothy Podber’s belonging on the sidewalk. Charred wood, even though that building was never on fire. Diagrams of electrical machines. I like to look and don’t care that I don’t understand. I have lived a long time without knowing the names of the trees. Barely able to recognize a locust leaf, and yet I can recognize the sight of Oak, even varnished or cobbled into a desk or plank. I have lived here, not knowing the difference between a rock dove and a pigeon. Of my apartment, knowing only that the cock roaches are German and the rats Norwegian. I believe I could name all the animals of the world but not all the insects. If I were a ghost, and I could be one turning the key for the thousandth time, walking through the doorway, and turning on a tap. I have heard that ghosts are very tired which I could see, having no bloody heart, drawing energy from grids or from the living. Making cold spots, the cold makes me sluggish too. And I am concerned about eternal life of ghosts because most ghosts say “Go away.” None of this is good and I worry about wood or if we will ever have enough materials to assemble the object after taking it apart I took apart the hornets’ nest. After my brother sprayed it with heavy chemicals and killed them all. Breaking apart the clay. Wasps in paper coffins. In pursuit of the natural world, I cut a swath. A giant lifting boards and logs, uncovering sleeping animals, or embryonic mice, worms, snakes, and salamanders all call me an asshole. Today, cast iron wood cooking stove pulled up from the basement. Pinball machine, bubble gum machine still filled with candy, coin slips cut out. Tonight, perhaps more of Dorothy Podber’s belonging, a wooden storage chest: from below the street level, rotten wood. Moisture, earthy, soft. The color in the dark, is dark. Carmel, moist and full of the earth’s products. Like the rats who live below us, a night shade of dark, not rotten yet full of the rot of newspapers, my contribution; I collect ephemera, and revisit it, gleaning, when I am alone, making lists and piles by color or subject or time. Taking apart the nest, all in their beds of grey I had to know and then I had nothing, clumps of paper, and the dead in their paper beds. Hundreds. And my brother was mad at me. This does not prevent me from asking What is inside the trunk on the street? Picture postcards? Soft porn or hard sex toys? Nightgowns and sleeping caps of flannel or whiskey? Looking at the ground, the tatters of the nest I destroyed But how else could I know the nature of physical objects, and of my body. I, a physical object. What’s inside this body? The Mutter Museum and its collection of swallowed needles, fish hooks, and pennies. For a long time looking in, gazing, trying to know The nature of the physical, like the man who could balance jagged, sea rocks, one on top another. He could know an object and if those boulders could be stacked as steady as plates or as delicately as a house of cards. I, a physical object, reading Anatomy, 1924, colored plates, diagrams with overlays. It is good that I saved these thick books, each one a doorstopper on anatomy and child care, from someone else’s previous life. From the time of paper and print, colored plates to lift and reveal. Each plate, like a candy pop, taking you further, dissolving layers until you reach the baby soft center. Diagrams, like this one. See. Atticus told me of finding the foot pedals of a sewing machine covered in dust on Mott St., about how he put his foot to the pedal and the flywheel turned although the rest of the machine was extinct. Flywheel, I like to say it and see it. Alone with paper, or reading from paper, in a room It’s quiet. Me, a noun, an animal from the time of the animals, I write and I eat with my hands. Going inside the tatters: threads and grasses A nest: all the elements of paper assembled Working late and decoding secret writings from the tatters ( read once of a wealthy young artist who slept in nests he made out of bedding in hotel rooms. I thought a nest should be made from discards, like a quilt.) Cleanly folded paper lying in street, A job request for urine. I close my eyes A broth of steaming piss The feather again (the blade). This time on the street. First quietly in front, then as I move, cocks quietly towards the 10 o’clock position. Later in the day, silently soaked with winter salt. Too, same roach and rat. Regulars. Can’t recall the center, only the fury with which I tore it, then a drop in the blood at realizing what I had done. Paper at my feet. Bodies. Stillborns. What little I know of other lives. My father’s workshop, wooden tables turned to rot. Slumping Tools, rods, belts, motors. A Hoarder buried under her own greed for newspapers and receipts (Is reading & writing an act of composing or composting?) Intercepting Messages barked Out by Frank’s box or the poems of Hannah Weiner And I follow my spirit guides Bernadette Mayer and Brad Will Bernadette has lots of books and papers. Poets build bookshelves: the worse part of poetry is the paperwork. Poems distract poets from thoughts of death. Objects distract me from realities. Objects protect me from thoughts of death. Yours and mine. Ours. Film of Brad eating fire or of Brad’s wedding to a man in a time before men married men. Watching him eat fire. I have some of his objects which keep me from thoughts of his death. I lie. I have none of his objects. Grandpa wrote his figures on panels of cig cartons. And I save their clutter too, even the phone numbers I won’t erase them thus keeping the Database of Phantoms alive. Robert felt incomplete until the ashes arrived. Well, and then he really had something. Wooden bowls feed me. Cup of tea makes me know I am alive (If I were dead I could not feel the heat of the cup or taste the bitter tannins.) Cup of tea distracts me from my death and the death of everyone I love. Bloodstained napkin told of toothache Cup of tea told me I was alive Seed pods lay crushed on sidewalk Rattan dining set told me to sit down and watch Bulky coats feed the pigeons and squirrels Chair legs ordered me to the desk, to write of this.
